Windmill towers are next to arrive

Phyllis Booth Reporter

Thursday

Sep 3, 2009 at 12:01 AM

Getting two 72-ton wind turbines to the top of the windmill site off Westminster Road went off without a hitch on Aug. 26.

Princeton Light Department Manager Jonathan Fitch expects that by the first week in October the blades on the two new 230- foot high windmill towers will be turning in the breeze and the upgraded wind farm will be fully operational.

In mid-July, the two 1.5-megawatt wind turbines, made by Fuhrlander, began their trip from Germany to the United States. They landed at a port in New Jersey, were loaded onto trucks and arrived at the entrance to the wind site's access road on Aug. 26 at about 1 p.m. Other large trucks carried counter weights, each weighing between five and seven tons each, and rigging for the hydraulic crane that unloaded the turbines from the trucks.

One turbine was placed on a flatbed trailer capable of climbing the access road; the other was put on a self-propelled, all-terrain trailer that was operated remotely.

The windmills' large nose cones also arrived on Aug. 26. That leaves only the towers, which are expected to arrive this week in three sections, each about 70 feet long.

The operation is under the direction of Lumus Construction of Woburn, a firm that has done other wind farm projects. Three members of the Lumus crew who will erect the towers are from the local area: Jim Cormier is from Westminster, Jeff Berry from Leominster and Eric Esielionis from Templeton.

Four crew members from Germany are already at the site and will be working on the electronic components, said Fitch.

"They will be testing all the wiring, commission it and eventually turn it over to us," Fitch said. The entire crew will be here for about a month while the wind farm is being constructed.

"Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod has the same size tower as we do," he said. "So we coordinated the shipping and delivery of the turbines from Germany to the United States [with Otis]."

The blades for Otis came with the same shipment as the Princeton blades and went through town on their way to the Cape. The blades are from South Dakota, the equipment for the foundations is from Denmark, and the towers are coming from Minnesota.

Fifteen to 20 trucks will carry the parts for the Manitowoc lattice-boom crawler crane that will erect the towers, blades and turbines. That crane has a 300-foot boom and takes a week to assemble.

Cost of the project is $7.3 million and the windmills are expected to provide 40 percent of the town's energy needs. "We'll have the largest site in Massachusetts with the two turbines," said Fitch. "Hull has two windmills, but the total capacity is less than what the windmills in Princeton will produce."

Fitch said the windmills should stabilize Princeton's light rates. Over the life of the project, the energy produced should be in the range of seven cents per kilowatt, he said.

"When I start to sell the energy credits, we'll be saving a lot more," Fitch said.